A Baroque Odyssey 40 Years of Les Arts Florissants
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A Baroque Odyssey 40 Years of Les Arts Florissants Sunday 8 December 2019 7.30pm, Hall Handel Atalanta – Sinfonia to Act 3 Coronation Anthems – ‘Zadok the Priest’ Purcell Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, 1683 – overture; ‘Welcome to all the pleasures’ Handel Alcina – ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ Orlando – ‘Ah! stigie larve, ah! scellerati spettri!’ L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato – excerpts Oscar Ortega Ariodante – excerpts Purcell The Fairy Queen – excerpts King Arthur – Passacaglia The Fairy Queen – ‘Now the night is chased away’ interval 20 minutes M-A Charpentier Les Arts florissants – excerpts d’Ambruis Le doux silence de nos bois Lully Atys – excerpts Rameau Les fêtes d’Hébé – ‘Pour rendre à mon hymen tout l’Olympe propice’ Hippolyte et Aricie – excerpts Platée – excerpts Les Indes galantes – excerpts Les Arts Florissants William Christie director Paul Agnew director Sandrine Piau soprano Lea Desandre mezzo-soprano Christophe Dumaux countertenor Marcel Beekman tenor Marc Mauillon baritone Lisandro Abadie bass-baritone Part of Barbican Presents 2019–20 Please do ... Turn off watch alarms and phones during the performance. Please don’t ... Take photos or make recordings during the performance. The City of London Corporation Use a hearing aid? is the founder and principal funder of Please use our induction loop – just switch your the Barbican Centre hearing aid to T setting on entering the hall. Welcome A warm welcome to this special concert fewer than three of tonight’s soloists – Lea celebrating the 40th anniversary of Les Arts Desandre, Christophe Dumaux and Marc Florissants. Mauillon – are Jardin alumni. When William Christie founded the Tonight’s concert showcases a vibrant ensemble in 1979 his aim was to breathe range of Baroque highlights, with Rameau, new life, through the use of period Lully and Charpentier rubbing shoulders instruments, into the music of Baroque with Handel and Purcell. Sharing the composers who had fallen into neglect. directing honours are William Christie and Paul Agnew, who began as a soloist with Central to William Christie’s vision were the ensemble and took up the position of his beloved French composers – notably Associate Musical Director in 2013. Lully, M-A Charpentier and Rameau. It’s in no small measure thanks to his efforts You can find out more about Les Arts that these composers are now household Florissants in its anniversary documentary names. William Christie, The art of giving which will be shown at the Ciné Lumière at the Institut As times have changed, Les Arts Florissants français tomorrow night at 8pm. has continued to champion music from Monteverdi to Mozart and it has also It promises to be a wonderful celebration. nurtured a new generation of singers I hope you enjoy it. through its Academy, Le Jardin des Voix. It’s a testament to the scheme’s success that no Huw Humphreys, Head of Music, Barbican Programme produced by Harriet Smith; advertising by Cabbell (tel 020 3603 7930) 2 A Baroque Odyssey George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) Henry Purcell’s 1683 Ode for St Cecilia’s Day Atalanta – Sinfonia to Act 3 sets a text by Christopher Fishburn and was Programme note Coronation Anthems – ‘Zadok the Priest’, commissioned by a group called The Musical HWV258 Society to celebrate the saint’s birthday on 22 November 1683. Though less famous than Henry Purcell (1659–95) Purcell’s later ode for the same organisation, Hail! Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, 1683 – overture; bright Cecilia, it is full of instantly recognisable ‘Welcome to all the pleasures’ touches, from the grinding string dissonances that set the overture in motion to the dancing George Frideric Handel rhythms with which ‘Welcome to all the pleasures’ Alcina – ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ begins. The trio of voices enter with a ceremonial Orlando – ‘Vaghe pupille … Ah! stigie larve, ah! grandeur before relaxing into a more playful scellerati spettri!’ mode. L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato – ‘I’ll to thee well trod stage anon’; ‘Or let the merry bells ring Handel’s first two operas for John Rich’s Covent round’ Garden theatre, Ariodante and Alcina, are both Ariodante – ‘Scherza infida’; ‘Bramo aver mille based on episodes from Ariosto’s epic Orlando vite’ furioso. Both were very successful, with Alcina (which was premiered on 16 April 1735) achieving Handel’s operatic fortunes were increasingly no fewer than 18 performances, though it was precarious after the glory years of the early to prove the composer’s last operatic triumph. In 1720s. The disastrous 1733–4 season in the King’s the aria that closes Act 1 in a spirit of unbridled Theatre, Haymarket, seemed to spell the end. hedonism, Morgana, Alcina’s sister, performs the Yet true to form, Handel remained unbowed. coloratura showstopper ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’, He quickly teamed up with the actor-manager its seductive melody plundered from one of John Rich at his new Covent Garden theatre, built Handel’s early Italian cantatas. on the back of the fortune he had made from The Beggar’s Opera. Trained as a dancer, Rich Two years earlier Handel had premiered another specialised in productions that combined music, Ariosto-inspired opera, Orlando, at the King’s dance and eye-catching scenic effects. One of the Theatre. The subject of the half-comic, half- most lavish was Handel’s pastoral opera Atalanta, dangerous hero’s struggle to master his unhinged performed in May 1736 to celebrate the wedding passions chimed perfectly with the Enlightenment’s of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The jaunty Sinfonia cult of reason. Although Handel had assembled to Act 3 encapsulates the light-hearted spirit of a a glittering cast, including the castrato Senesino in work designed as royal entertainment. the title-role, Orlando survived for just a handful of performances. The hero’s celebrated mad scene With their Augustan splendour of sonority, the includes a few bars in 5/8 time depicting Charon’s four anthems Handel composed in 1727 for the ‘Stygian boat’ and culminates in a disturbed, coronation of George II enshrined the recently multi-tempo aria that begins as an ironically naturalised Saxon as Britain’s national composer. courtly gavotte (‘Vaghe pupille’) and continues The most famous, Zadok the Priest, has been sung with a piercing lament over a chromatic ground at every subsequent British coronation. After a bass. The Purcellian echoes here are unmissable. slow-burn introduction for strings, each harmonic change precisely calculated, the stupendous entry The years between 1738 and 1741 were a of the chorus is just the kind of Handelian coup watershed for Handel. With his finances in a that led Beethoven to exclaim: ‘When he chooses, parlous state (though his aristocratic backers he strikes like a thunderbolt.’ always staved off bankruptcy), he now wavered between Italian opera and works in English: the 3 oratorios Saul and Israel in Egypt, followed in the five allegorical-mythical fairy masques have only winter of 1740 by the ode L’Allegro, il Penseroso a tangential connection with the play itself, they ed il Moderato. Milton’s two complementary arise naturally, or supernaturally, from the spoken poems, skilfully interleaved by James Harris drama. and Charles Jennens, explore the contrasting temperaments of the extrovert (L’Allegro) and the In the Act 2 masque the fairies entertain Titania introvert (Il Penseroso) while evoking an Arcadian as she prepares for bed. The countertenor aria idyll. The music of L’Allegro is at its most good- ‘Come all ye songsters’ is Purcell at his most humouredly confident in ‘I’ll to thee well trod stage floridly Italianate. After an ethereal prelude in anon’, while ‘Or let the merry bells ring round’ which recorders evoke forest birdsong, the trio begins in dancing elation, with a tinkling carillon ‘May the God of Wit inspire’ and its postlude evoking English change-ringing, and ends with trade on the echo effects beloved of Baroque an exquisite – and, again, distinctly Purcellian – composers. Then comes a sonorous – and to our portrayal of the drowsy villagers ‘by whisp’ring ears distinctly Handelian – C major chorus, ‘Now winds soon lull’d to sleep’. join your warbling voices’, followed by a skipping, soprano-led song and dance for the fairies. The Handel’s Ariodante scored a fair success on upbeat ‘Now the night is chased away’ comes its premiere in 1735 thanks to its two stars: the from Act 4, as daybreak brings with it a return to alluring French dancer Marie Sallé and the the natural order, and a fairy attendant leads the castrato Giovanni Carestini in the title-role. The chorus in a celebration of ‘That happy, happy day, apparent faithlessness of Ariodante’s betrothed the birthday of King Oberon’. Ginevra prompts an outpouring of despair in ‘Scherza infida’. In this, one of Handel’s most Premiered in 1691, King Arthur is unique among profound arias, the vocal line seems to expand Purcell’s semi-operas in that Dryden’s patriotic infinitely while bassoons weave a mournful plaint play – a farrago of pseudo-history and fantasy between muted upper strings and pizzicato – was planned from the outset as a multi-media basses. In the final act the plot, hatched by the entertainment. At the centre of Act 4 Dryden villainous Duke Polinesso, untangles. The dying prescribed, simply, ‘minuet’. Purcell had other Polinesso confesses his crime, and Ariodante and ideas, writing an elaborate passacaglia (‘How Ginevra express their constancy in the exuberant happy the lover’) over a repeated four-bar duet ‘Bramo aver mille vite’. bass that interleaves dance, solos, duets, trios and choruses. Building to a magnificent climax, this huge movement pays overt homage to the Henry Purcell chaconnes that were de rigueur in Lully’s works for The Fairy Queen – Prelude to Act 2; ‘Come all ye the Paris Opéra.